Defenders of Chicago (Inactive)

Game Master Jubal Breakbottle

Issue 1: A Second Chance
A life of fun and excitement comes with a heavy cost, but a friend puts Levi in touch with a mysterious man that offers a second chance but little choice.
Issue 2: Foes and Rats
At first it seems like any other job, but when the tests begin Levi finds herself in a struggle for survival. The other test subjects lose their minds and begin killing everyone in the facility and it is up to Levi with her investigative talent and new gift to find out what caused the chaos before Swiftgarde cleans up the problem with extreme prejudice.
Issue 3: Searching at My Enemies
Levi begins her new job working to bring justice to Chiacgo's criminals, but the pieces of the puzzle begin to not add up and when Levi begins asking questions the mysterious man warns her she will do more harm than good if she presses the issue. What Levi learns shakes everything she believes in to its very core.
Issue 4: Soldiers and Phantoms
A discovery reveals the tip of an iceberg of immense corruption and manipulation and Levi is finds she played a central roll in one of the largest injustices the world is yet to discover. Levi becomes a fugitive from Swiftgarde's internal security forces finding her with unlikely friends, and at ends with her team.
Issue 5: Vengeance of Spectra
Spectra delivers a decisive blow to secure her freedom, but the cost may have been too great as Swiftgarde's power and influence grow.

I would also like to add the Fearless advantage and the Duty disadvantage. His Duty would be to the Chicago PD with him being a Forensic consultant.

Legacy - Are his parents proud of who he has become?;
Approval - Seeks to emulate the ideals that Steve Rogers embodies;
Thrill seeker - enjoys when things are dangerous, sometimes putting himself at risk to push himself.

Brawn 2
Agility 2+3
Mind 2

Powers
Pistol Technique 2 (+1 hit, +1DM) 2pts
Offhand Shooting (Make 2 attacks in your panel at -2 dice for each attack.) 2pts
Disarm Expert (You are adept at relieving foes of weapons. Get +2 dice bonus to attacks when you deliberately try to disarm a foe or break their gadget.) 2 pts
Double Taps (Fire a ranged weapon twice in a panel at the same target, but must aim carefully and can't move or use any other powers on page when you do.) 1 pt
Heightened Agility (+3 bonus to all rolls with the selected stat.) 1pt

Advantage: Frightful Presence (Something about you scares people. Whenever you try to frighten or intimidate someone, you get a +2 Multiple Bonus.
Advantage: Contacts

Disadvantage: Normal
Disadvantage: Social Stigma (Criminal)

Skills: Athletics/Throwing, Stealth/Shadowing, Deception/Lying, Streetwise/Crime

Mental Malfunction: Vengeance (Holds Daniel Dunsmore responsible for the death of his brother.)

A few things:
* You seem to have a more current version of BASH than I have. Fearless and Duty are not in my book. Two things:
1. post their game mechanics so I can review
2. Describe why you want them. This was the reason that I didn't want built characters.
* Please describe Enzo as I asked in the OP. I want his story not his build
* Please review your character descriptions, relative to other applicants. It's a bit thin. I would appreciate more development

Please review your character descriptions, relative to other applicants. It's a bit thin. I would appreciate more development.

Specifically, I'm struggling to understand the story of the character with Swiftgarde. You elude to it but don't describe it well enough for me to understand.

Sorry about that. The logic behind Fearless, is the thrill seeking mental malfunction, reckless behavior became a coping mechanism to help deal with the loss of his parents on 9/11.

The Duty part is another aspect of his mental malfunction that is fallout from the loss of his parents. He has deep seated sense of responsibility to try and protect others. Felt that that Duty was best placed toward Chicago PD as a tie in for him being a Forensic Consultant with them.

Fearless: Completely immune to the effects of fear, including powers based on fear. Any attempt to frighten or intimidate you automatically fails. You also get a +2 dice bonus to all attempts to intimidate others.

Duty:You owe your allegiance to someone or organization (Chicago PD). You obey all orders from superiors within that organization without question. If it means sacrificing your life so be it. Often it leads to suddenly having to drop everything to follow your orders.

I am working on back story for him, basics am fleshing bits more and will post):
The Crucible
Issue 1 - Loss (Enzo and Daniel both lost parents on 9/11. Daniel's to the attacks, Enzo's due to a car accident. Enzo had a brother, Tony he had to care for.)
Issue 2 - Ashes (Daniel does a lot of daredevil acts, base jumping, skydiving, and so on to cope. Enzo turns to life on streets to support his brother, finding acceptance with Street Gangs.)
Issue 3 - Forged (Daniel has a chance encounter with Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, conversation has a profound impact upon Daniel. Enzo takes control of a gang, Tony becomes his right hand man, turns it more violent than it was previously, even cops concerned with going into his territory without backup.)
Issue 4 - Knowing (Daniel and Enzo and Tony cross paths by pure chance. Enzo was robbing a Chevron with his Tony when Daniel walked into the middle of it. In the ensuing fight, Enzo fired off several shots at Daniel, unaware that Tony was trying to sneak up on Daniel. Enzo's brother Tony, took a bullet to the head. Daniel subdued Enzo, holding him for arrest til CPD arrived. Enzo blamed Daniel for his brothers death. This incident helped Daniel realize what he was meant to be. For Enzo, it was the moment he swore that Daniel Dunsmore would pay for his brother's death.)

FWIW I don't think your explanation for why you want those advantages and disadvantages rise to the level of commitment required for those advantages and disadvantages. You can try again to convince me, or go without them.

Looking for a description of Enzo as a person/villain.

cheers

I'll skip. Can't think a more compelling argument for them at the moment. They were just nice haves, but not important to the overall character.

As for Enzo.

Summary - Enzo Capote is the leader of the Reapers. Notorious street gang operating near the lakeshore. He got where he did through sheer determination.

Stats - Brawn 2, Agility 2, Mind 1

Powers - Intensive training, gun skills, possibly heightened attribute

Skills - Extremely street smart

Advantages - Frightful Presence, Leadership
Disadvantages - Social Stigma (Criminal), Normal

Origin & Current - Enzo didn't start off walking a life of crime, that's just where things lead him. By the time he turned 18, he had spent almost as much time locked up in Juvie as he had been not. Murdered and intimidated his was to head up the Reapers. All was good until that damned do-gooder Dunsmore made him shoot his brother.

Picture - http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/17400000/Dave-Batista-batista-174143 56-270-400.jpg

How are the rules for telepathy in Bash? Are they free-form, or is it pretty much limited to mind-to-mind communication? Can I impose images or induce hallucinations?
Is there any way to actually do damage to a foe?

You are always ready to react to danger. Once per issue, you can perform an interrupt action without having to spend a Hero Die.

You have a secret you try to protect at all costs. The Narrator decides if the secret is damaging enough to allow it as a disadvantage. Note that this secret is something that NOBODY other than yourself knows. If your family or team-members know it, then you cannot take this disadvantage (for this reason most Heroes who have a secret identity don’t have this disadvantage).

I usually like to intentionally leave details thin so they can be filled in by gm and players alike as they progress through the story. I've been out of practice for making up compelling stories for awhile now but I'll try to give more details to flash out a little of the organization Swiftgarde.

Swiftgarde is a complex enemy in the way that they do some good but they achieve it, more often than not, with greater consequences than most people find acceptable. For example they find college grants, charities, and provide services to improve communities and make the streets safer. However they do a lot of those nice things to cover up the bad stuff like framing, extortion, blackmail, murder, robbery, and many other heinous crimes that I can't think of right now.

Levi, before Swiftgarde, was a thrill seeking youth entering into college to pursue law, but she landed herself in a bit of debt rather quickly with dangerous people. Levi was close to losing a finger or being sold into slavery by her debtors until a friend referred her to a position that would help solve a lot of her problems. The position was with Swiftgarde in their experimental research labs as a human test subject for a new drug.

Levi took up the offer and gained her powers from the Swiftgarde experiments and in turn was given a nice paying job working with Swiftgarde using her powers to do various jobs.

Levi at first thought she was doing good work, but would discover that the odd jobs she was performing turned out to be criminal and hurt a lot of people that probably didn't deserve it. So Levi stopped showing up to work, and found out that no one just quits the company especially people with special powers; Swiftgarde internal security came after her.

Levi was forced to turn against the team she was working with, but and found allies in former enemies. I can flesh out the allies, enemies, and unknowns if youd like in a separate post. Again, I like to keep it loose so it's easier to establish ties to npcs for the sake of the story telling.

In order to get Swiftgarde to stop putting pressure on her, she had to gain leverage. In issue 5, Levi gained information from the Mysterious Man, a frenemy working with Swiftgarde about something which would be sufficient leverage to get Swiftgarde to stop actively trying to kill Levi. This something turned out to be a small metallic sphere the size of a tennis ball. Levi's curiosity got the better of her and activated it by pressing the button on the sphere which caused it to be absorbed into her body. Swiftgarde son realizing they failed to keep the device from Levi, stopped going out of their way to kill her the time, but they also used Levi's success against their organization to receive more power and influence in the US.

Hopefully this is what you are looking for and gives you more tp work with. What else can I do to make a better player for your game?

I copied the game mechanics for Telepathy in your draft build. That's it. Feel free to use pictures, because they are worth a thousand words. Showing pictures to people would be equivalent to random day dreams. They wouldn't be harmful or hallucinations, because the people know that they have no connection to reality.

Yes, there are lots of ways to damage a foe, but I didn't give Gothic one. Mentally delivering pain to someone else, while actively using Telepathy which effectively and directly closes the feedback loop, would be traumatic to the Telepath. If you want to go down that path, Gothic would get as dark as Kestral. From a Build point of view, Mental attacks are very expensive.

So Swiftgarde is not hunting her, because she absorbed a "small metallic sphere the size of a tennis ball into her body?" Did she know that she was going to absorb it when she pressed the button? What information did she get from the frenemy before or after she absorbed it? Wouldn't you want threaten the guy to death for the information?

I like loose ends/NPCs/plot lines to connect stories, but you are giving me gaping holes that I can't make sense of. For the example above, I need you to own your character's information and reaction to that sphere and absorption. Meaning, what do you know? How did you react? How did the relationship with your Mysterious Man end? Did you threaten to drop him from a 20 story building to tell you everything he knew? I know I would if I could make good on that threat, like Spectra can.

So to answer your question "What else can I do to make a better player for your game?", I need a clear, coherent, and consistent description of your character's personality, origin, and current situation. I don't expect your character to be omniscient or even know 100% of the truth, she could believe lies, which the player may know or not.

Clear?

Let's change it a little then so I can simplify this... Disregard much of everything up to now.

Personality traits: Negativistic, Unstable, Natty

Personality: Levi today is dark and often times distant; a far cry from her old excited, happy go lucky self. Her recent gifts came with a heavy cost through physical trauma and then she was tricked into harming people that most likely didn't deserve it. A side effect of Levi's gifts also causes her to suffer from hallucinations and headache episodes that can drive her to very different corners of her dark personality. Deep down the shadow of her former self still exists, but its weak with the weight of her past.

Origin:Her family, two older brothers and a sister, have fallen out of contact with the death of her father and mother that died overseas on a humanitarian mission when Levi was just 15. Born in Rhode Island, she moved to Illinois to attend the UChicago for law on scholarship.

While attending school she partied a little harder than most and met her boyfriend who got into trouble with a loan shark and she tried to bail him out by volunteering as a Swiftgarde test subject. She hated the tests she was put through and still suffers from the headaches and hallucinations. However the tests proved to be a success, granting Levi her gifts, and Skygarde offered her a job as a Runner, someone that took care of special jobs. The loan shark was paid off and the money for continued work was too good to turn down, and Levi didn't know to what extent she was being deceived.

Levi eventually learned Swiftgarde was manipulating the truth to hurt the wrong people; innocent people. However, by the time she learned, Levi had already crossed the line that bloodied her hands when she intercepted information that was meant to give advance warning of an attack on a facility that based Doctors Without Borders.

When she learned the truth including the startling similarity between the job she performed and the events leading to her parents death she broke off from Swiftgarde and eliminated the team she had been working with.

The Mysterious Man, was Levi's trusted contact. He was the same person that recruited her as a Runner, trained her to control her gifts, helped her with mundane tasks; he acted like a father to Levi. He gave her the lead about a tech that could hack into Swiftgarde's servers and transfer encrypted data to the internet exposing Swiftgarde for what it was. However, when Levi tracked down, stole and activated it, the tech, also just a small metal sphere, unexpectedly burrowed into and merged with her body. Levi was horrified and tried to phase it out, but she couldn't seperate herself form it. Moments later she was forced to flee Swiftgarde's security forces from the server room at Swiftgarde's HQ.

Levi wanting answers, tracked down The Mysterious Man and confronted him. Before she could say anything The Mysterious Man with his back to her in his chair raised his gun to his head and said, "We never had a choice," before he pulled the trigger. Levi was left with unanswered questions and conflicting feelings about her relationship with The Mysterious Man.

Current Situation: She recently completed her law degree and passed the Bar but is working as a PI and moonlights as a vigilante thief to pay the bills. She is trying to learn anything she can about the technology she has inside her while trying to simultaneously bring down Swiftgarde as penance for her past crimes. Many of her leads on the tech have been dead ends, but she has been successfully acting as a thorn in their sides at least on a street level.

Levi lives alone, in a bad part of town, and while she isn't always pleasant, the tenants of her building have come to accept her despite her dark behavior and unstable personality.

Her boyfriend Jim now ex, hasn't been seen since before Levi left Swiftgarde, not that she has given him much thought.

Villain-
Swiftgarde is a corporation specializing in espionage. They are masters of misdirection and concealing lies within truths. Their strength lies in their network, adaptability, the gifted Runners they have working for them, and their influence and power in the political and business world. Rarely are they ever in a situation where an outcome doesn't benefit them in some way. The faces that represent Swiftgarde are never simple villains, they are often just people trying to keep up in a corporate culture that runs on greed, power, and absolutes such as the Mysterious Man.